I woke up this morning to a new release of the tvOS plex app calling out a new DVR Ad Skip function: Plex for Apple TV
I did find the new option within the DVR settings to mark commercials rather than removing them. At this time I’ve tweaked my comskip.ini file and set it so that the last commercial in any recording is kept instead of removed as I was having trouble where comskip would delete the previews at the end of a show. Having it keep the last commercial break has resolved this issue and all is fine, but I still have to fast forward through these commercials when they come up, is it possible to still have both marking and removing so that when this last commercial comes up, I can skip it?
I may consider switching marking and skipping- this was the behavior I was used to in Windows Media Center with comskip and DVRMSToolbox, but would the commercials would still skip automatically. Is there a way to have the ad’s skip automatically or do we have to click the button each time like intro skipping?
I’m curious how this is working internally. I assume that when a ‘non-destructive’ commercial removal is used, the commercials are just marked as chapters? I have my own post-processing suite for transcoding/tagging/marking commercials and I would like to be able to use the ‘Skip Ads’ button with DVR’d shows.
So, my question is, what convention is Plex using to tag commercial segments so that it knows to display the ‘Skip Ads’ button on playback?
I would imagine it works similarly how DVRMS Toolbox works with Comskip and Windows Media Center. I had this setup working well before migrating to Plex for live TV-
Comskip produces an XML file I believe with the commercial skip points and then DVRMSToolbox had a WMC add in that took in that XML file and skipped to the next point when it reached the first point effectively hoping over the commercial in the timeline- I preferred this method because it was the quickest turnaround time than removing the commercials and re-encoding a new file for WMC. Plex’s turnaround time for commercial removal isn’t THAT bad, depending on the length of the recording ~5-10 minutes after it ends, which is great. I’d go with the skipping if it could be automatic though, just to speed up the turnaround time.
in WMC, you were able to still watch the recording immediately after it finished, but with no skipping. ComSkip worked in the background and if it finished while you were still watching it, the add-in would load the ComSkip XML file and you would magically get commercial skipping for the rest of the show. That’s kind of how I would love Plex to work, but you have to make the Skip automatic with an option to turn it off (in case Comskip got it wrong). With DVRMSToolbox on WMC, you can press the up arrow during playback to toggle commercial skipping on and off. I really enjoyed this setup, but it was time for modernization and moving away from wmv files.
I forgot comskip creates those files; I use them in my scripts to mark/cut the commercials, but I delete them after I’m done to reduce clutter. But, if they are using these files to display the new ‘Skip Ads’ button, I can simply disable their deletion! Although, I will have to reprocess all my existing files to recreate the files
Ah, so I assume that the information for the markers is stored in the SQL database after comskip runs from within Plex. If that is the case, it would be nice to be able to import commercial markers through an API or something, or if Plex could look for the .edl file to import commercial markers. I realize that is not a trivial thing to program, I just like being able to fine tune post-processing.
Yeah, I like to let Plex do the organizing and let my code do the processing, that way I know exactly what’s going on. Plus, there was a bug (recently resolved) that was occurring for months where comskip was crashing for people. There was also a bug with moving files from the .grab directory last year that took months to resolve; this is the bug that pushed me to create my own solution for post-processing. Neither of those are your fault, just reasons as to why I am skeptical of some of the all-in-one solutions within Plex.
I live with bringing up the transport bar and skipping a chapter for now. Thanks for the info!!!
